Up the Duff
by Shiggity Shwa
Summary: Vala deals with job and occupational changes while pregnant. Chapter three crosses over with Stargate Atlantis. Part 4 in a series of 8 or 9
1. Dust to Dust

_A/N: Just your friendly reminder that each of these chapters is set AU from each other, with chapter 2 remaining somewhat canonical._

Up the Duff

Chapter 1

Dust to Dust

It is a forfeit. That's all it is.

"Afternoon Princess."

"Mmm hmmm."

"Still doing inventory?"

"Mmm hmmm."

"You still holding that grudge."

"More strongly than ever."

Marks a tick on her sheet and draws her eyes to the next shelf, not understanding why there isn't a faction of Earth government or military or whatever just dedicated to the dilatory dryness of inventory. She's been in this room since nine that morning, and the florescent blue lights are starting to hurt her eyes, it smells like gun oils, and oddly enough, like pressed leather. She smells like Cheetos which is the only thing she's wanted to eat today. Out of spite, she ensures that all weapons she touches end up with a thin layer of orange dust.

Cameron leans his back outside of the weapons cage, or rather, her cage that she's currently housed in counting P-90s, forty-three in this lock-up minus the thirteen currently off world. Counting the bullets, four hundred twenty-nine strips not minus that whatever they took off world. Counting weeks, currently fifteen, almost sixteen and just starting to show if she squints her eyes enough in the mirror after her shower to rid her of the gun oil and Cheeto smell.

"You can't stay mad at me." Speaks to her through the gated doorway and it reminds her vaguely of her third husband, of the tricks turned abuse he used to pull, of wearily going to claim him from lockup as he spouted silver-laced apologies or when he came home violently drunk only to deliver her tiny baby booties the next day, and it's the bifurcation of loving someone so much she hates them. "I didn't do it because—"

"Because you're the father and you're worried that little old Vala's done in now that she's got a biscuit in the oven—"

"Bun, it's bun and—"

"That I'll bungle up the whole off world experience, so you banish me to a basement where there is no natural light—"

"We're inside a mountain—"

"I'm done speaking with you now, you're mucking up my counting." Waves him away with her hand and tuns her back towards the door counting the seconds until he slips inside the lockup because she's learned to gauge him so well and even though she is a little infuriated with him, she doesn't want to be alone.

"Vala, I had to take you off the team—"

"—To keep you safe," they both chime at once and she rolls her eyes, her pen floating over the boxes of ammunitions for side arms.

Knows he wants to curl around her, but she won't allow it. Not in the complex, not anywhere else. The idea of having a baby with her has enamored him and he tends to pad around after her like a loyal little puppy on off mission days. Shows up to do 'paperwork' on his day off and they sit in his office and they argue about whether or not it's too early to pick baby names and if he even has a say. It is, and he does not.

"Not just your life, Princess." His jacket crinkles as he double checks over his shoulders to ensure that Woolsey, the gnome of a man who is her only companion in the lone world of inventory, is still occupied at the other end of the weapons lockup. "There's the baby."

"Of course, wouldn't want to stop thinking about it, now would we?" Sets her clipboard and pen down on a shelf and shoves her hand elbow deep into a huge bag of Cheetos, her third of the day, that's she's nearly demolished.

"There's the team. They don't have to worry about you, or God forbid, sacrifice themselves to get you safe." Only masticates crunchy orange puffs of corn as an answer, but pivots on her heels so she can face him, knows the incessant neon powder is all over her, but she usually waits until she'd done gorging to clean it up.

"I hope you're not expecting a rew—"

"Holy shit, you're showing." Without invitation his hand conceals the miniscule bump, despite being warm and, although she'll never admit to it, a little comforting, she jolts in the darkness at the sudden action. "You're finally showing."

"How can you even see down here?" Doesn't answer, enamored with another certain part of her, the absolution of it. She did the same thing while popping out of the shower a few nights ago, but SG-1 have been on an off-world mission for the last five days. He still smells of sweat and dirt and a bit clary. "Oh that's right, your eyes haven't adjusted to the blinding blue—"

Woolsey's footsteps echo down the empty corridor lined with more bright blue lights. She slaps Cam upside the head rousing him from his fetal conversation and bursting orange dust into his hair and over the back of his jacket. "Cameron."

Jumps up, almost bunting her in the face with the back of his head and presses a quick kiss to her lips as she protests about being caught, they all know she's pregnant, but mum has been the word about the father. She shoves his face away again smudging more orange across his cheeks and this is how they're going to be found out.

His large hand covers her forehead for a brief second before she knocks it down and shuffles herself into the opposite corner. "You're hot."

"Stop that." Points at him and hopes the waver is out of her voice, the footsteps grow louder and closer. "That's how this started."

"No, Vala, you have a fever."

"No, I'm sweating because Woolsey is about to catch us." Quite proud of being able to slap done two more attempts on his part to touch her, while harshly rubbing the dust off his face.

Gets the idea, pushes into the other corner of the lock up just as Woolsey taps by.

"Colonel Mitchell."

"Woolsey."

They nod to each other and the little wormy man turns to her. "Vala, I'm writing you up again, you cannot have food in this lock up."

"But," she pouts, holding her tummy and knows it comes off better in the bitter light. "My baby is hungry."

"Give her a break, Woolsey."

But the little man is already walking away. With a toss of his wrist he adds, "rules are rules."

The sound of the thick metal door clunks behind him with a hiss of the lock falling into place. Cam reaches for her again and she widens her eyes in warning. He turns his concerned hand to a finger point. "Go see Dr. Lam."

"I'm not sick, I'm pregnant."

"You need to eat something other than Cheetos."

"Are you offering to take me to dinner, Darling?"

"Always." His expression, the innocent, contented expression on his face flickers across hers before she remembers Ariel, his girlfriend. Blinks soft into the horrid blue light to clear her eyes and shakes her head at him, leaving him with the clipboard and bag of cheese dust. He doesn't follow her out or try to grab her hand, just reminds, "Call me for anything."

3:33am and her right eye twitches as she sits up in bed. The Cooking Channel still plays soundlessly over the television across the room and it spits off the same irritating light as the lockup. Doesn't understand why she's awake so suddenly until a roaring pain rips through her stomach. Before she twists herself loose of the blankets, she vomits over her comforter, a bit splatting on the ground and pressure builds within her head. Her hand slaps to hit the lights and all her sheets slop off her onto the ground. The room tilts, bows sideways and her arm slips down the wall knocking items off her end table. She falls, less than eloquently, on her bum and almost sits on her phone. The screen is cracked but she can still input a number, she's gets an answering machine like she knew she would because tonight was a date night.

"Cameron, it's me." Doesn't recognize her own voice, deep, tired, shaky, "I feel awful, I need to go to the infirmary."

He showed up less than ten minutes later, she knows because at four in the morning, he hauled her tired body into the infirmary for the overnight doctor to diagnose. Turns out he wasn't off base on a date, he canceled and stayed in to catch up on reading various baby books, ones he's been hinting at her to read.

"Is this because all she eats is Cheetos?" His hand smooths back her hair from her face and she lets him, relishes in a touch that is not her own because her limbs feed deadened with extra weight. They've placed a needle and a tube in her arm giving her water, she said she would drink and they both ignored her, by then her will, her consciousness slowly faded in and out.

"Well I'm sure that's not helping, but this is just a case of the stomach flu." The overnight doctor scribbles something on a clipboard, her inventory clipboard, the one she worked so hard on, and she squirms trying to snatch it back.

"No one else here has it, no one else on SG-1 has it, so how'd she get it?" Cameron's hands guide her back to the bed by the shoulders until she rests on the pile of pillows he collected.

"That's interesting." The doctor taps his pen to his lower lip and the repetition of the action gives her a new wave of nausea. "Has she eaten anything off planet? Anything uncultivated or raw?'

Half awake, she can't see his expression, but knows it's serious with probable exasperation, and his fingers slip into her palm as she tumbles into an exhausted sleep. "You had to have that apple."


	2. The Frying Pan and Fire

Up the Duff

Chapter 2

The Frying Pan and Fire

He is so proud. That's all it is.

"And this is my wife, Vala, whom the Ori have blessed with infinite wisdom and beauty."

Even when she was Qetesh, or masquerading as Qetesh, she never had any of her believers speak about her with such stunning words. He speaks in this manner whenever he introduces her to new people and new priors who squint at her with distrust as to why she would want to marry Tomin. His voice is solid with honesty, and his words brush against her skin like many pecking kisses, he gets her to blush, she blushes, after all the things she's seen and done have made her shameless.

They've technically made it into the safer part of the pregnancy, a few weeks over the second trimester so the baby is viable enough, at least to her, to speak of in concrete terms.

"You should be proud to be adding another follower to the ranks of the Ori believers." They lay in bed, staring up at the patchwork ceiling, an awful draft blowing in from a crack in the window. He hadn't lied about the ice balls; the first villager was claimed this morning when a chunk the size of a watermelon thwacked him right on the top of the head.

"Where I come from it's considered superstitious to even speak of the baby before the second trimester." He turns on his side towards her, his hand stroking gentle lines over her stomach covered by a nightgown, a sheet, and three knitted blankets. When he doesn't grasp the clarity of her words she adds, "that's after the third month, women on my home world, the first months of pregnancy are hard on their bodies."

"Well you have fattened up to enable yourself to safely carry this child."

"Bulked up, I bulked up." And she had, was already showing and of course the food, the endless supply of food her brought her that she demolished like a plague of locusts on the finest farm crops had nothing to do with it. The baby that should not be within her did. "I still don't like the idea of talking about it."

"The Ori smite those who are superstitious out of pity," he explains, a finger tracing around her belly button, swooping over the dip in her stomach, still hoping for that genie. "The women of your home world were being tested for their faith of the Ori. Since they believed in outdated hokum instead of the truths written in The Book of Ori, they were punished, and their babies sacrificed."

When he speaks words like these, words about the unbridled killing of nonbelievers, the deaths of women and children and fetuses by the Ori because of their ignorant ways and ill faith, it terrifies her, and she feels the fire lap at her wrists, burn the skin away from her toes, her ankles, her shin and turn the bones into splinters, drown as her lungs flaked to ash and just the intense pain of her final breath. But nothing was more frightening than the stark black nothingness that followed, the be nothing, feel nothing of the void she sat in for years until she floated back to her own body.

The second time she had held Daniel's hand, wanted to tell him that it wasn't going to be as bad as he thought, but that was a lie, the oil ignited her, made her flammable, and she still feels the heat within her. The fetus, the baby now, is not likely to survive the way she did purely on luck.

"It's announcing the pregnancy this early a bit like gloating?" She turns towards him in the bed, laying the bump, bigger than it should be, bigger than her first time around, the biggest she's ever been with child up to this point, into his palm watching as he chuckles and continues to soothe the baby. She piles her hands on his shoulder and tuckes her chin against them, he is warm in the very chilly room and across from the bed the fire from the hearth dances and smokes. "Isn't it a bit prideful? Especially if we're talking to a couple who's had a long go at conceiving and here you are recently married with a baby on the way?"

The baby now nestles against his stomach and he pecks her lovingly on the nose. "Your consideration and thoughts of others is boundless. The idea that my wife is so compassionate truly pushes me to be better in my servitude of the Ori. Thank you."

"Your welcome?" She nuzzles her head back against his shoulder, confused as to how she continues to manipulate him, and how not to get caught in a lie, the answer was clear. "Tomin?"

"Yes, my adoring wife?"

She really doesn't want to do it, but she has to cement herself in the environment because it's becoming ever clearer that the inept minds back at Cheyenne Mountain are not coming to her rescue anytime soon, more likely they assume her dead in the burp of the supergate. Tomin teaching her the driving force of the planet isn't be such a bad idea as he will probably grow fonder of her through their studies, and she will learn the rules to keep her out of the frying pan and the fire. "Would you teach me the Book of Ori?"

And it's like she told him she was pregnant again, with a second child whoopered onto her first. He sits up in bed, eyes glowing with glee in the weak glow of the firelight. "I would love nothing more than to teach you the ways of the Ori."

"Tomin."

"Perhaps by this weekend's prostrations you'll be fluent enough to give a story in clemency, allow the other villagers to see what a how pious you are as a woman instead of feeding into those rumors that you were banished from your villager for being loose with your body and morals."

She should feel some sort of ill-wishing towards them, but it's all basically true. Promiscuous with her body, even more so after Qetesh because certain images, certain triggers like hands gripping her thighs in just the right way, or the unadulterated pure scent of jasmine take her back to the movements of bodies shifting in bed and she kept the same morals for a long time, just trying to survive.

"Tomin."

"Yes, oh—" pats her on the side of his face as if she is innocent and still fully pure, as if she hadn't been used by another man, and another, and another and then a system lord and then several thousand men. "Forgive me, it's just—up until very recently, until you arrived, my life was without meaning. I always strived to achieve what I could in the name of the Ori, but always felt incomplete. You've given my life so much meaning and I promise to give to you and our child anything I possibly can."

"Well right now that's food."

Laughs at her, his hand rubbing her cold cheek in the darkness, the hearth is low now, the flames licking a dark blue. "You are hungry again?"

"Yes." Slaps his knee her hand on one of the painstakingly made quilts. "We are hungry."

His lips meet hers, gentle in the darkness, and express all the emotions his words put into place, his calm and understanding words, the ones untailed by the Ori, and he tucks a piece of her hair back behind her ear. "Then come, you two shall eat."


	3. In Season Strawberries

Up the Duff

Chapter 3

In Season Strawberries

It is better for her. That's all it is.

She has her own office, not just lab, but an office, complete with four walls and a window that shows the expansive layout of the city. In the early mornings when she unlocks her door the room is a brilliant pink and gold, in the evenings when she locks her door, and she's the only person who has a key other than maintenance, the room glows a brilliant orange like a roaring fire sits just outside her window. The little purple flower sits on one of her filing cabinets, she has three now and only one of them houses bonbons and the chalky lollipops she craves like mad.

On her third week here, when the nervousness had boiled down and she was starting to recognize and have truthful conversations with the core team members she would be working with, they surprised her with a beautiful amphora as a welcome gift and she gave her best performance of "oh, it's so beautiful" and "would you look at that" and set the pot aside with gratitude not knowing if it was an Atlantis thing to give a gift of pottery or Pegasus galaxy custom.

Later that day Ronon knocked at her open door and dragged in his burly frame barely fitting through the entry. She expected him to ask her a question about the artifact they found in one of the lower levels of the city, the one she hadn't gotten to yet because she'd been experiencing the very first wave of morning sickness that had probable lateness due to jetlag and inter-galaxy travel. Half expected him to bring her another amphora to keep the first one in good company, but he grinned at her knowingly, a little cheeky, "It's for your plant."

"What is?" she questioned, eyes darted around the room trying to pick out his eyeline in the sunburst of orange in the room, playing off purple currents of water outside.

"The pot." Points to where it's set up on a side table for further inspection, old habits die hard and she wanted to check to see if it had any particular monetary value. "We—well I—noticed the way you worry over that plant. It'll need to be replanted into a bigger pot soon, so we got you a bigger pot."

He sat on the corner of her desk and grinned at her and at that moment she felt the baby move for the first time, bubbles twisted light as air and popping inside of her. They talked a bit more, about her transfer but not the reasoning behind it, no one but Daniel knew at that point, about her home world and his, both decimated by alien races in one way or another. About how similar Goa'uld is to Wraith, how she learned to read ancient from The Book of Ori, with Tomin's help, something else she didn't mention.

Leaving her old life behind had been too hard and too easy, now that she was gone, she carried with her only the fond memories, shopping with Sam, popcorn and movies with Mitchell and Teal'c, simple things that bonded them and she did miss their companionship, their trust. Sam was going to stop by before the end of the year as she was now Captain of the _Hammond_ and it required a docking space for a little under a week. In their last correspondence Sam spoke of trying to get a reunion to happen, something she wasn't overly enthused about. Sam would understand the pregnancy, the reason for leaving, it would be harder to explain to the others and if Daniel inveigled his way on board—

Since she left him in shock in his big empty lab, he's tried to contact her once a day, sent emails and video messages, even letters written in his barely legible chicken scratch. She doesn't know what to do with them. Read them and hear them in his slightly whiny, very patronizing voice, take his words into account, allow him the chance to have a discussion with her where he convices her to leave her beautiful office, her warm day starts and three-flowered amphoraed plant behind to stay in his white on white on hardwood apartment and raise their child? Instead she deletes them, clears her inbox completely, recycles the videos off her system, but keeps the letters stashed away because maybe the baby would like to read them one day, she won't deny them a chance to know their father, it's just, now isn't the time.

"I would kill somebody for a strawberry right now." It doesn't stop her from shoveling the salad she's in the middle of eating into her mouth, thankfully the baby has been generous with cravings, chalky lollys and anything leafy and raw.

Ronon looks up from his dinner, a plate brimming with meats and proteins and very brown and sloshy. Her salad barely has any dressing on it, for desert she has a pomegranate waiting, but it's not strawberries. He points with his fork, speared through a large piece of chicken, back to the commissary, "There's strawberry jello over there."

"It's not the same," she mutters and a piece of her hair tumbles loose from her ponytail. Her salad bowl is suddenly empty, and she hopes he doesn't find it rude if she fixes her hair at the table. Some men find it rude.

He doesn't, watches enthralled as she tugs out her hair, rubbing her scalp softly where her bun sat all day. "How—uh—how isn't it the same?"

"Just the redness and roundness and the juicy sweetness. The sour unripeness and the crunch. Have you ever had a strawberry?" Another piece of hair drifts into her eyes and she blows it out of her vision.

"I haven't," he spears another hunk of meat and tears into it. It's not the polite table etiquette she's used to on Earth, but it's refreshing, how they would all eat when the food ran out on an off world mission and they finally got back to the cafeteria, how no one would say a word as they gobbled away sending brief smiles to each other. She once fell asleep on Daniel's shoulder and thought it awfully nice of him not to shake her off. "But man, you're making me want some too."

"They'd probably be in season on Earth now." She pouts a bit, resting her chin on her hands as the day begins to catch up to her. The baby is satiated with food, but requires her to sleep for at least ten hours, and she's beginning to fear the team may think her as antisocial when really she fell asleep in her shower last night.

"Why strawberries all of a sudden?" He's holding her pomegranate trying to dissect if and how she's going to eat it. Half of his plate of meat is gone and outside a silver moon reflects adjacently over the rippling water.

"Because I'm pregnant," sighs it wearily into her hand before she realizes the major truth she's just divulged. Her eyes spring to his and the fruit topples out of his hand and rolls across the table back to her.

"You're pregnant?"

"I did not mean to say that." Crosses her arms and buries her head away, it's dark and quiet and peaceful lulling her as her stomach and brain remind her that strawberries would be better than sex right now. Most sex. Sex with most men. Not him. Despite the fairy-tale aspect of requited love, certain parts of him played lower than her imagination desired.

"Con—" his voice booms but becomes more quiet when she doesn't share his enthusiasm over the subject "—gratulaions?"

"Thank you." When she sits back up he offers her a warm grin, like he knows what happened, or what has happened to her before. Knows of her previous pregnancies and how she let the baby be taken away each time.

"Not planned?" Stabs up the remaining half a plate of meat and jams it into his mouth after he asks the question so if she takes offense, he doesn't have to say anymore. She nods, heavy-lidded eyes making it very hard to care about anything other than strawberries. "I was an accident too."

"I probably was, I never asked."

"See and we're great. Your kid is going to be too."

"I'm under the assumption that as long as I love them, their origin story doesn't particularly matter."

"Exactly, if the kid is anything like you, it'll be so smart that it won't care about shit like that." His words are refreshingly honest and as he speaks them, he covers her hand with his. The action isn't meant to calm her down or reign her in, instead reassure if she requires it, or agree with her if she doesn't.

"Thank you." Grins at him, and the rough pads of his fingers across hers makes the baby jump again, flutter its little marble life away inside of her. "You're the only one I've told, well, other than the father."

"Uh oh." He cracks the pomegranate in half with his hands and squints his eyes when all the little red jelly seeds roll over the tabletop. "You know what that means?"

"What?"

"That I have to plan the baby shower."

A few weeks later, nearing the middle of her fourth month of pregnancy, he's in her office helping her handle heavy artifacts found in the sewer system or off a wraith ship, she really doesn't know anymore, her heads a bit turned around because Dr. McKay returned from his sanctioned vacation, or as Colonel Sheppard likes to call it, his Mc—Kay—tion, and they've been butting heads a bit. She keeps forgetting she doesn't know the history around the artifacts the way he or Daniel do, but he keeps pretending he can read Goa'uld or Wraith or To'Kra at the same proficiency has her. This morning they may have had a bit of an argument that erupted when he blamed her foul mood on her baby and she blamed it on the twenty years she spent being a prisoner to Qetesh in her own body. She slammed her office door with such force that one of her pictures fell.

"You want me to hang that back up for you?" He raises his eyebrows at the picture leaning against the wall, it's black and white and is of SG-1 on one of her first missions as a full member.

"It's fine where it is for now."

He ignores her, setting an oar or a paddle or a very dull spear with many dialects in writing onto the examination table, and picks up the frame. Bits of glass glisten on top and he shakes the photo over her garbage can to clear them away. "Hey, the baby's not McKay's is it?"

"What? No." The room is glowing orange and her pants are starting not to fit again. They've allowed her to continue to wear her SG-1 uniform, but when she broke the news of her pregnancy to her team members, Colonel Sheppard used it as an excuse to place a requisition for a uniform in 'multiple' sizes. He's also detailed Ronon as her assistant and she finds the irony behind being important enough to have an assistant humorous, when really he does all her heavy lifting.

"So the baby is this guy's" His index finger snaps to the photo. She leans over the desk, head angled to view the picture and his thumping digit against Daniel's chest.

"That would be him." Doesn't even bother lying to him because he's a better lie detector than Teal'c and it only serves to use up her limited energy. "How'd you guess?"

"You're turned towards him and you're so happy." He chuckles and thumps at her. "Look at that beautiful grin."

"I'm happy now. I grin now."

"You do, but it's different." The glassless frame hangs on the same nail, the picture doesn't gleam and mocks her a bit. "You smile like a mom now."


End file.
